It's been a couple of weeks since my last entry, and let me explain the delay: I've become a Beach Person. I've never been much for the sun and sand, as that usually means (in the US at least) a corresponding presence of shit shops and traffic and overpriced Mai Tais and hi-rise condominium complexes that if you lived in you'd be home now. There's also the fact that I burn salmonpink in bright sunshine, usually in strange patterns (hand-shaped patches on my sides and back, raccoon circles round the eyes) due to insufficient training in sunscreen application. It's not that I don't like sand--I dig on the desert, baby, and no mistake--or water--gimme a cascade and a camera and I'm good for the day. Just that the two in combination invite all kind of unattractive consumerist idiocy.D has been a Beach Person since forever, so she was psyched to move south for a little while (time becomes quickly meaningless there, compressing and expanding like the tides), first in Arambol (pictured above) and then in Palolem, with bounces in between to break up the excruciating bus rides necessary to cover even the smallest distances (more on that later). We arrived in Arambol as the monsoon was hacking its last rattle against the palmy dunes, and after one overnight storm into our first full day we were blessed with an uninterrupted week of sunny sunshine. After an initial sizzle in near-equatorial rays, we commenced to darken like the natives (or not so much). And during that time spent swimming and relaxing and washing off the stench of Mumbai and my illness in Pune, when our only needs were met by walking the half a click up the beach for late breakfasts and lazy sunset dinners, I converted wholeheartedly to the cult of the Sun God. Count me in, brother, and save me a seat up front. Arambol was everything I've never been lucky enough to experience on any shore of any ocean; it was as peaceful and quiet as any place I've ever been. Shit, man, it was serene.
When was the last time you got to use that word? Been a pretty minute for this soul, I can assure you.
We went from that not-your-average walk on the beach in Goa's far north to another in the remote south in Palolem (pictured below).* The latter is a picture postcard, a tourism department brochure, only the prototypical sun-washed crescent of sand and swaying palm trees. The sun sets every night in a notch made by the northwest headland and the island you can walk to at low tide. We watched the entire village (fisherfolk all) pulling their nets from the cove on our last evening there, all chanting a chorus of heave-ho's local equivalent. Dogs and crows and fish eagles caught a whiff of the goings-on and hovered in their own ways, scoping out their choice of the fish that skipped across the surf in frantic attempts to escape the nets and the baskets and the eventual tandoor ovens. Made hungry by the spectacle, we went out for a seafood dinner and dined heartily on the afternoon's catch for something like $12, a real splurge considering the cost of things here and our budget for this excursion.
But I shall stop painting this particular picture, for if I were the one reading this account instead of the one writing it, I'd be ready to kick the author's ass up the block and around the corner. Don't be hatin', though. Let me tell you a story:
Our last morning in Palolem, we shouldered our packs and caught a lassi near the bus stand so we could wait in the shade for the bus that would take us the 4 km to Chaudi (Canacona). That bumpy road traversed, we waited another 30 minutes in the terminal for the bus to Margao, from whence our train to Hampi (east, in neighboring Karnataka, where I am writing this missive) would leave the next morning. Margao's bus and train stations are the clearing houses for southern Goa, and the city itself is not worth telling you it's not worth writing about. We had planned to make it in time to catch a movie and an early bedtime, but the Fates were against us.
So yeah: we're waiting in Chaudi like 30 minutes and milling in a shuffling queue for the eventual bumrush that is boarding buses here, and the bus pulls in--the same bus, we realize, that we rode to get to Palolem a few days prior. That trip was worthy of mention for being the closest I've been to physical carsickness since I was a wee tyke puking in the backseat of the family station wagon. But I digress... We're at a disadvantage for the boarding scrum because of our backpacks and wind up considering ourselves lucky to occupy the "Ladies Only" seats at the front of the bus. Being a Southern gentleman this wasn't my choice of seats, but did I mention the hellish ride that we had on the way in? Besides, there's a sign painted in the same color as the "Ladies Only" that says the bus will only carry "11 Standing," and I'd heed any fool estimating at eleven baker's dozens the number of standing riders on any one bus plying the backroads of Goa.
Anyway, we're in the reserved seats and feeling lucky when I start to wonder why the bus isn't pulling out. Worse yet, the driver and his whistle boy are beside the truck banging on what might be the engine or the tire or (for all we know) the team of 96 squirrels whose combined legpower fuels each bus over here. They look perplexed (the driver & co., not the squirrels) and they're wiping off what must have been a vital piece of bus at some point, and they're drawing a crowd. Some of the men in attendance wear the khaki uniform of bus employees, some are in street clothes, curious passengers who have gotten down to see what's the hubbub. There's intense conversation outside our window and the minutes pass and they're all smiling and laughing that futile laugh that says in any language "We're not going anywhere soon, boys" and we're still on board, sweating our respective tits off because we're not gonna give up these seats, goddammit. Eventually we've been on for maybe 30 minutes, because the next bus to Margao has rolled in heavy and the rest of our fellow passengers are cramming into its remaining available pockets of breathable air. Having none of such foolishness, we get down and opt to wait for the next ride.For those of you keeping count, that will have been 90 minutes or so waiting to get on a bus that runs our route every half hour for a two-hour trip. It's now high noon and heating up, and we decide that D will carry on our daypack when we board the next bus and I'll wait behind to stow the heavy packs and hopefully find a seat saved for me whenever I can board. The bus finally rolls in and the plan works and we're on the winding mountain road leading north.
But not for long--oho! Not for long. Because not two minutes after noting the proximity of the passing traffic on our starboard side, our bus winds up at the rear end of a traffic stoppage stretching for half a mile up the backside of the mountains. Opting not to wait it out, our driver decides to turn around with a busload of the travellers from the other side of the jam and head back to Chaudi. We persevere, our refund secured and our packs re-shouldered, and walk down the line of stopped cars and trucks and buses to try to do the same as the marooned pilgrims now riding our bus. Down we go, and the situation resolves itself into a degree of clarity. Here's what happened: gasoline truck marked "INFLAMMABLE" in about five languages on its side has lost a squeeze play with the dump truck that tried, inconveniently, to cross a bridge too narrow for the both of them. The driver's side of the gas truck is peeled back like the ragged rind of an orange. No sign of either driver, but there's an Indian crowd around the accident just milling about and collectively biding time, while we're wondering what and where and how to get there. I see gas trucks in accidents and tend to hightail it the other direction, but the calm blanketing the scene was enough to make me chill even in the heat of the day. There was an Italian couple in front of us riding a motorscooter and trying to convince the locals to help them lift it (there wasn't room on the bridge to drive around the wreck) up on the guardrail to walk/roll it past the collision. We watch this scene with a degree of incredulity--hell, everybody's watching with a smile or other expression asking Will they make it?
Yeah, they make it the length of the bridge and bring the scooter down and ride off, and we follow the crowd past the wreck and eventually find a bus heading back to Margao. Easy-peasy, right?
Except that our new driver is apparently pissed at the refund of half his take for the interrupted trip, and he's tearing down the road like a man possessed. I've been accused of driving recklessly from time to time, I love a fast drive on a winding road, but I have seriously never been so scared in a motor vehicle. The bus was tilting around the corners an easy thirty degrees, and even the other native passengers were looking around like WHAT the FUCK?! We've got an hour or so left on this bus and the driver's moving like his next fix is too many miles down the road, and I'm envisioning scenes of carnage and wondering how many Indians I can lift when the time comes and I have the David Banner/Incredible Hulk moment. Even with the whistle boy collecting the fare like it's another day at the office, my adrenaline is still ratcheted way past F and hovering well in the red. I'm watching towns pass in successive blinks of the eye and mentally drawing a map of the road to Margao and trying to place these towns on it, telling myself it's okay, there's only maybe thirty minutes to go, twenty, ten. Then there's Margao and one last hellbent turn around a flyover into town and we get down and brush ourselves off and hide our piss stains and move on with the day as the sun sets, albeit on shaky legs and aching knuckles.
So let this go to show you, kids: Even a day at the beach isn't necessarily a day at the beach. It's hard work kicking this far back, but it's a good gig if you can get it. The punchline? 60-odd kilometers from Palolem to Margao, and this was our day. Until next time.
*: Of the two days we spent in Calangute and Baga breaking up the journey, let me only say that the food was good and we got a nice room at a cut rate. Those two destinations, huge on the package-tour circuit and just now coming into season, are hellholes on a scale rivaled by your Myrtle Beaches and Panama Cities. Yick.
